Comment by fusslo

The injury to their ego is tremendous. The ones that allow their authority to become their identity cannot mentally separate a challenge to this authority from a direct attack on themselves. To them it is quite literally the same thing and it is incredibly dangerous. It is how the authoritarian mind works, because to them it feels like survival.

Just last week, two NYPD cops were indicted for evidence tampering for doing exactly that.

The indicted cops responded to an off-duty cop's DUI crash. They texted each other on their personal phones so as not to create a record. They positioned their bodycams so as not to capture the incident. At one point, one of the cops held the other's to make it look as if he was still standing there while he secretly called their supervisor. They then let the drunk cop drive away. Hours later, another officer found the car parked on the sidewalk. That officer did finally arrest him.

"These police officers did their job. We should not be here today," said union president Patrick Hendry, who accused the DA of targeting the officers. "He needs to support officers instead of going after them. Enough is enough."

To their credit, these charges came based on a referral from NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau, though it was 4 years later.

Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/nyregion/nypd-dui-coverup...

I've always treated most of those kind of videos as staged. I like the idea that that's how it goes down but, almost because it's cathartic, I don't trust that it's real footage, as opposed to, essentially, short film fiction.

> The cops that pull them over always treat them in the softest and most deferential way imaginable.

Without denying I have seen preferential treatment first-hand, you might take a step back and imagine...

You're dealing with someone who entered a career known for its machismo, where they received training on how to use physical violence, including training on shooting a weapon that could quite possibly be with them. This person has been drinking or is flat-out drunk, and it's only a matter of minutes before they realize how screwed they're about to be.

Treating them softly is what you SHOULD do.

We should be asking whether we are content to find ourselves in a world where that soft approach is considered the noteworthy exception.

I don't think this is particularly unique to cops. When you're trapped and cornered, you desperately resort to any possible approach to get out of it. Acting incredulous or indignant when you know you've messed up, with the small hope it will get you out of it, is a very common human thing.

This apocryphal quote was a statement about his overwhelming power (strong enough to hang people who have done no wrong), not on the mutability of the law. It is frequently mis-applied.

FISA warrants were even more incredible, with well below 1% rejection rates.

And then hilariously people would say that this is just evidence that the warrants are all written extremely carefully and conservatively.

The stupidity of this is that cops literally used to not exist. People used to have to arrest people themselves and drag them to a magistrate and then prosecute them themselves. Didn't mean society was mad max.

Doubt you'll find many cops who'll know that though.

I have been told, by a cop, that the exclusionary rule should be eliminated. This is the thing that says that evidence obtained in violation of the 4th amendment cannot be used against you in court. Their argument was that the cops know who the bad guys are and should just be allowed to throw them in prison. End of story.